Silesian Station (2008)

by David Downing

  'That sounds good.'

  'It does. How did your meeting go, by the way?'

  'Don't ask. I don't think I've ever met so many brilliant people in one room, and every last one of them with a death wish. They cracked jokes about all the Nazi leaders, and were practically praying for someone to kill Hitler. They're organising discussion groups on the possibilities of sabotage. The possibility that one of them might be a Gestapo informer doesn't seem to have occurred to them. I think they'll talk themselves into their graves. I came out of there feeling quite frightened, because by law I should have reported every last one of them to the Gestapo. I decided my defence would be that I hadn't taken them seriously, which at least had the virtue of being probable. I certainly won't be going back.'

  'And what about Madame Voodoo?'

  'She seemed a bit surprised too. I think she'll be sticking to the stars from now on.'

  He wasn't at all sure why, but he had rarely found Effi more desirable. He slipped the dressing gown off her thigh, revealing the lipstick number. 'I hope you've copied that down,' he said, 'because it's likely to get smudged.'

  Next morning the sky over the Tiergarten was a disappointing grey, and they had the cafe almost to themselves. Russell divided the newspaper between them, but it only took Effi a few moments to throw her pages down in disgust. 'It's that day again,' she said, pointing out a headline.

  It was Hitler's mother's birthday, and thousands of German women would be receiving their Honour Crosses from local Party leaders for providing the Reich with extra children.

  'If only she'd come back and give him a slap round the head,' Effi muttered.

  Russell laughed.

  'So what are we going to do about Miriam?' she asked.

  Russell folded his paper. 'All right. Let's assume Eyebrows kidnapped her. Why would he do that?'

  'For sex?'

  'Perhaps. For himself or for others?'

  'You mean like a white slaver or something like that?'

  Russell grimaced. 'I'm not sure white slavers exist. The fictional ones usually sell their victims to Arabs, and they always want blondes.'

  'The whole world seems to,' Effi said wryly.

  'I don't,' Russell told her.

  'That's sweet. But look, if he took her for himself he'd have to keep her somewhere, and I can't imagine him keeping her in his flat. The walls are thin in those buildings. I suppose he could be keeping her drugged, but not for weeks on end, surely. He must have another place. Maybe somewhere out in the country.'

  'Maybe. Let's take it one step at a time. Eliminate the apartment first.'

  'How are we going to do that?'

  'I don't know. Start with the portierfrau, I suppose. We can drive over there tomorrow morning.'

  'Yes, let's do that.'

  'You haven't told me how the filming went,' Russell said, deliberately changing the subject.

  'Oh, the usual mess. They think it's finished, but that's only because they haven't looked at the rushes yet. I expect I'll find out on Monday or Tuesday that they've decided to reshoot a few scenes. The last one in particular. It's supposed to be uplifting, but half the crew were laughing behind their hands.

  You never know, of course.' She looked at her watch, and got to her feet. 'I've got to go. My parents are expecting me for lunch, and they seem to eat it earlier each time I see them.'

  They took cabs from the Zoo Station rank, hers heading out towards the family home in Wilmersdorf, his to Neuenburger Strasse. The Hanomag was where he had left it, Frau Heidegger hovering in her apartment door-way.

  She made sympathetic noises about Russell's bruised face, and seemed satisfied with his story of walking into an open car door. 'I have a parcel for you,' she said. 'And there's some coffee in the pot.'

  Some of it had been there for several days, Russell guessed, after taking the first bitter sip. The parcel turned out to be a large envelope. It was sealed with red wax, suggesting either a nineteenth century eccentric or something more atavistic, like Himmler's gang. At least they hadn't scrawled 'Return to Heydrich' on the back.

  'Something official?' Frau Heidegger asked, with all the casualness of an SS attack dog.

  'It'll be my new accreditation from the Propaganda Ministry,' Russell said, placing the envelope to one side. 'They had to re-issue it now that I've become an American citizen,' he added glibly. 'How have you been?'

  Frau Heidegger was as well as could be expected, given the state of her knees. The doctor had told her to keep bending them, and now they were more painful than ever. Her brother was still frightening her with visions of Berlin under air attack, and one of her skat partners had heard that food rationing would be introduced the moment war broke out with England. She claimed that Dagmar's romantic entanglements were wearing her out, but she seemed to be enjoying them almost as much as Dagmar. Siggi had taken things a little too far the other evening, serenading her from the courtyard like some crazed Hanoverian Romeo - 'I'm afraid he stood on the roof of your car, Herr Russell' - but it had worked. Dagmar had eventually taken him inside, probably for a good talking to.

  After one last sip of coffee, Russell looked at his watch and made his excuses. Up in his flat he spread the envelope's contents out on his table. There were three carbon copies of official documents, each on headed Air Ministry notepaper, and a covering note, signed by 'a comrade', which purported to explain the sources. The same 'comrade' also announced his willingness to answer questions.

  Russell skimmed through the documents. The first listed up-to-date production figures - current and projected - for the Stuka dive-bomber. The second contained the minutes of a meeting held to discuss a new American bombsight. The third detailed the experimental fixing of supplementary fuel-tanks to the Luftwaffe's longest-range bomber. This, the document's author explained, would extend the effective round-trip range of these bombers by approximately five hundred miles.

  It was like one of those old parlour games where you had to guess which one of several stories was false. The last one, Russell decided. It was the only one of the three from which the Soviets could draw conclusions that were both vital and wrong. Everyone knew that Stalin was moving his industrial base eastwards, and here was something to help him decide how far he needed to move it. Russell reached for his atlas and checked the distances. If what the document said was true, then only catastrophic setbacks on the ground would render Soviet cities east of Gorki vulnerable to attack. Conclusion: the five hundred mile figure was a lie, designed to discourage the Soviets from moving their industries still further east.

  A nice idea, Russell thought. And nicer still that the Soviets would know that the information was fake, and take the appropriate steps. He grabbed a dusty sheet of paper from his typewriter, thought for a second, and scrawled 'first instalment' across it. He put this in the envelope with everything else, and sat for a moment, staring at his flat.

  It was beginning to look like a place that nobody lived in. Which was just about right. Waiting for sleep the previous night he had again found himself thinking about asking Effi to marry him. The trouble was, one good reason for doing so was to give her the possibility of American citizenship, which might make practical sense but certainly muddied the emotional waters. Russell wanted there to be only one reason for their marriage - the fact that they loved each other. 'Some hope,' he murmured to himself.

  It was almost twelve-thirty. After inspecting the Hanomag's roof for damage he drove over to Grunewald. Paul was sitting on the wall at the end of the drive, still in his Jungvolk uniform. The boy's mouth dropped open when he saw his father's face.

  Russell managed to convince him that the damage was superficial, but detected a hint of scepticism when it came to the supposed accident. 'Where are we going?' he asked, hoping to avert any questions.

  'We haven't been to the Aquarium for a long time.'

  They spent a couple of hours peering into illuminated tanks of varying sizes. The shoals of exotically coloured minnows glistened, the sh
arks gazed out of seemingly dead eyes, the anaconda refused, as usual, to unwind. After the porpoises had cheered them up they sat outside with their ice creams and watched barges chug by on the Landwehrkanal.

  On their way home Paul announced that there was no Jungvolk meeting in three weeks' time - could they go camping that weekend?

  'Leave Saturday morning and come back Sunday? I don't see why not. Has your mother agreed?'

  'Not yet, but she will. I thought about asking Effi to come as well, but she doesn't seem the camping sort, really.'

  'No. Just the two of us will be better, I think.'

  'I think so.'

  'Where do you want to go? Camping, I mean?' Russell felt absurdly pleased that his son wanted to go camping with him.

  'The Harz Mountains?'

  'The Harz Mountains it is.'

  The sun finally broke through as they reached the house in Grunewald. Paul insisted on asking his mother about the camping while Russell was there, and Ilse agreed readily enough. He casually told her about his visit to Scheffler's tomb in Breslau, and, rather to his surprise, saw a softness in her eyes which he hadn't seen for years. Her husband Matthias asked Russell in for a drink but he declined, claiming, truly enough, that he was late for work.

  Half an hour later he was parked outside the American Embassy. He sat in the front seat for a while, examining the wide boulevard through windscreen and mirrors, but no one seemed to be loitering with intent to spy. And what if they were? he asked himself. The Germans had all but ordered him to knock on the enemy's door.

  He took the SD's envelope from the passenger seat, got out, and walked swiftly down the pavement to the Soviet Embassy. The letter-box was small, as if the Soviets were fearful of receiving too much information, and he had to force the envelope through.

  A few minutes later he was joining Slaney in the Adlon Bar.

  'I see you stirred up some trouble in Silesia,' was the American's first comment, his gaze fixed on Russell's bruise.

  'I couldn't find any trouble,' Russell replied. He told Slaney about his search for alleged victims of Blechowka.

  'There's been another imaginary incident, then,' the American said. 'It's in there,' he said, indicating the Beobachter which Russell had been carrying round with him all day. 'Hand it over.' He leafed through the pages, found what he wanted, and passed it back. 'Top right.'

  The article was heavy on indignation, light on facts. The Polish police in Katowice - or Kattowitz as the Beobachter insisted on calling it - had 'frightfully mistreated eighteen members of the German minority, beating them with rubber truncheons and twisting their limbs.' The officers had been acting on 'direct orders from Warsaw' and 'indirect orders from England.'

  Russell laughed. 'I can just see it,' he said. 'Chamberlain and Halifax plotting in the Cabinet Room. "Why don't we get the Polish police in Kattowitz to twist the limbs of a few Germans?" God, I don't suppose either of them has even heard of Kattowitz.'

  'It's the "eighteen" I like,' Slaney said. 'You can just imagine them trying to decide what number of victims the story can bear before it becomes completely unbelievable.'

  'So there's no real news?'

  'Nothing to get excited about.'

  'Has Chamberlain's team reached Moscow yet?'

  'Yesterday. Their ship docked in Leningrad just before midnight on Wednesday. The galley staff were all Indian, so the diplomats had nine days of curries for lunch and dinner - I dread to think what the atmosphere was like. Anyway, they had a day's sightseeing on Thursday, took the overnight Red Arrow, and presumably spent most of Friday recovering. The talks were supposed to start today.'

  'No word yet?'

  'No. And there won't be anything positive. You know what'll happen next. The Brits and French will ask the Russians to join them in guaranteeing Poland, and the Russkis will say, "Fine, but how we can get at the Germans if the Poles won't let our troops into their country?" The Brits and French will try to pretend there isn't a problem, but everyone knows the Poles would never agree to a single Russian soldier on their blessed soil, let alone the Red Army. So the whole thing's dead in the water.'

  'Probably,' Russell said. He realized he was still clinging, like most Europeans, to the hope that enough opposition would force Hitler to back off .

  'The real point,' Slaney continued relentlessly, 'is that Stalin's got absolutely nothing to gain from signing up. If Hitler attacks Poland, and the British and French honour their guarantee, then Stalin can join the fun whenever he wants to, or just sit back and let the Western powers tear each other to pieces. And if the Limeys and Frogs leave the Poles in the lurch, then Stalin can thank his lucky stars he didn't sign up, because he would have found he was fighting Hitler all on his own.'

  'How come you're so wise, Daddy?'

  'Beer must be good for the brain.'

  Russell grinned at him. 'Fancy getting some food? I haven't eaten since breakfast.'

  'No thanks. I had a late lunch.'

  Russell stopped off at the reception desk on his way to the restaurant. Like most of Berlin's foreign correspondents he used the Adlon as a second business address, and there were two items waiting for him - a wire from Cummins and a plain envelope with his name on it.

  He opened the latter after ordering his meal. It contained everything he had suggested to Wilhelm Isendahl - the group's latest leaflet, a covering letter, and a typed article of around a thousand words. 'Father of Liars!' the leaflet proclaimed, and proved its point with a string of extracts from Hitler's speeches. The article looked, at first glance, like a serious expose of Nazi economic policies, but an Adlon restaurant heaving with Nazi uniforms didn't seem the place to read it.

  He turned to Cummins' wire, which was short and depressingly to the point: POGROM BRATISLAVA AUGUST 11 STOP FIRST OUTSIDE GERMANY STOP SUGGEST INVESTIGATION SOONEST CUMMINS.

  'I'll be back in a minute,' he told the waiter, who had just arrived with his wine. Making sure to take Isendahl's envelope with him, he walked back across to the bar. 'What do you know about a pogrom in Bratislava?' he asked Slaney.

  'Nothing. Has there been one?'

  'Apparently there was one yesterday.' He showed Slaney the wire.

  'I'm glad my paper has a Central Europe correspondent,' he said. 'Bratislava's not my idea of a good time.'

  It wasn't Russell's either, but he saw Cummins' point. A pogrom in Slovakia was like a secondary outbreak of plague, a sign that the disease was spreading, and couldn't be contained. Back in the restaurant he sipped at the glass of Mosel, wondering how the hell he was supposed to get there. The quickest way by train was via Prague, and that would take at least twelve hours. Worse still, he realized, his permit for the Protectorate had run out, and the chances of getting another before Monday morning were zero. He would have to go round the Protectorate in a bloody great circle - down to Nuremberg and Munich and then across to Vienna - and that would take at least a day. The blood would be dry by the time he got there.

  He rushed his meal in the hope that Thomas Cook would still be open, but the frontage on Unter den Linden was firmly shut up. He drove on down to Anhalter Station, where trains left for the South; there was one to Leipzig at ten o'clock, with only a two hour wait for the connection to Nuremberg. He would be there by six-thirty, in Munich by eleven. The trains to Vienna were slow on Sundays, but he should arrive before nightfall.

  Russell decided to think about it, and ordered a coffee at one of the con-course cafes. The arrivals board caught his eye, a litany of long delays and cancellations. The Wehrmacht manoeuvres were still wreaking havoc with the schedules.

  He could fly, he suddenly realized. At least to Vienna, if not Bratislava. He drained his coffee and set out for Tempelhof in the gathering dusk. There would be no more flights that day, but someone might still be around.

  The Lufthansa information desk was closing as he arrived, but the young man behind it seemed in no hurry to get home. There were no flights to Bratislava, he told Russell, and none to Vien
na on Sundays. There were, however, flights on every other morning, and they left at nine. The price seemed astronomical, but with any luck the Tribune would pay it. If they didn't, too bad. An extra day with Effi was worth it.

  He asked how long the flight took, and was told two and a half hours. This was progress, he thought. Getting from one atrocity to another had never been easier.

  'So what do we do,' Effi asked, 'just knock on his door and ask if he's holding any girls prisoner?'

  They were sitting in the Hanomag, about fifty metres down from the apartment block on Dragoner-Strasse. The street had a Sunday quietness about it, just a few smartly-dressed couples walking towards the spire in the distance, presumably intent on attending a late morning service.

  'We wait,' Russell said. He was still recovering from Effi's performance at the wheel on the drive over.

  'For how long?'

  He smiled at her.

  'Patience is not one of my strong suits,' she admitted.

  'I'd never have guessed.'

  'I...' she began, just as the nose of the Mercedes peered out from between the buildings.

  'Look at me,' Russell said, as it turned towards them. 'As if we're talking.'

  The Mercedes drove past on the other side of the road, and its driver cast a cursory glance in their direction. There was nothing suspicious or interrogative in the look, but Russell was left with a fleeting impression of cold purpose.

  'Shouldn't we be following him?' Effi said, hand on the ignition key.

  'No. He'd see us. And now we know he's out, we can go and question the portierfrau. Or I can,' he corrected himself.

  'Why you? I can charm people.'

  'I know you can. And if she's a movie fan - which, in my experience, ninety-nine per cent of portierfrauen are - she'll recognize you, and our anonymity will be shot to shreds.'